


When We Were Young

by natcat5



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: AkuSai Day 2015, AkuSai Month 2015, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:47:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/natcat5/pseuds/natcat5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faded like your name on those jeans that I burned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When We Were Young

The afternoon smells of smoke, nicotine and candles. The way the white and gray curl around their fingers, fill their nostrils, the air. The taste of it on their tongues; bitter and familiar.

“It’s a nasty habit,” Isa says, and Lea grins, his fingers burnt and blistered, practiced callouses and smudges of black that never fade. Dark marks from where he tried to burn the hair off his arm with a lighter, where he upset a candle, where he dropped a match. His body is dappled like spots, marked further by freckles, up his back and along his shoulders, speckling the nape of his neck.

Isa doesn’t smoke, but they spend afternoons curled up together on the same bed, the smell of Lea’s cigarettes heavy in the air, every curl of smoke sinking into their hair, clothes; surrounding them. The dirt from each other’s hands smudged against their skin, dirty feet nudging on top of the blankets. The cuffs of their jeans are torn, tears in the knees where scabs poke through. There’s a scratch on Isa’s nose that he keeps picking at, and a bandage-wrapped burn on Lea’s wrist that he keeps fiddling with.

The ceiling fan in Lea’s room turns lazily, dust floating in the sunlight, air hot and dry, barely stirring. They stretch out shirtless sometimes, sweat beading on their skin.

Heat waves hit Radiant Garden rarely. An elegant city cooled by the bubbling, magic-saturated fountains within it. Summer days out in the town square, tasting ice cream and sweets from the vendors and stalls all crowded together. Sharing popsicles and licking cones, sticky and sweet on their fingers. They roam aimlessly, as the children of the Gardens do. Soccer balls bounce down the streets, skipping ropes pound against the pavement, and the teenagers roam restlessly, down in the underground fountains, or deeper still, in the sewers.

They spend every summer like that, loose on the streets. In the trees and markets, and when they’re older, on the roofs and in the underground. They join test of courage matches, balancing on the castle ramparts, or playing nicky-nicky nine doors at the crazy magician’s house. They roll up their pants and plunge into The Fountain Court, the cooling waters washing over them, lapping against the charcoal smudges, ever-permanent on Lea’s fingers.

Isa tries to get a job, when they’re older still. At various vendors, at the shops and stores, with the castle guards. But no one’s looking to hire a scruffy something-teen-year-old, especially not one tailed by a charred looking redhead with a smile like a smug cat.

So their summers remain free, and so do they. Shooting off fireworks at night and trying to sneak into the castle’s underground basement. Days filled with easy sparring in city corners, wrestling in back lots and strolling aimlessly through the town square.

The smell of smoke never leaves them, and even Isa, careful and cautious, becomes heavy with the smell of it. From too many afternoons wrapped up in Lea’s bed, legs folded over on top of each other, hair brushing each other’s faces. Isa’s stupid cold hands and the long toenails on Lea’s feet. Elbows digging into sides, knees knocking, gross morning breath and Summer B.O. Teenage boys.

They’re close. They’re best friends, and they’ve always been close. It’s a friendship, the best kind, where they live in each other’s rooms and can’t wash the smell of each other out of their clothing. The taste of Lea’s smoke and Isa’s cologne and the exchange of the occasional handy under the blankets.

But they _are_ friends. Friendship is what it is. It’s singular, exclusive. Lea’s friendly, and he’s got a passel of acquaintances who smile at him and wave, or shake their fist angrily, depending. But he’s only got one best friend. One Isa. And Isa is a judgmental and sarcastic person, by his own description. And he’s got one friend, who is loud and abrasive and all-consuming. Whose scent he can’t wash out of his skin and sheets and being. And that’s enough. That’s enough for him. He’s not consumed with the need to be remembered, to be thought of, to live on in a thousand different hearts and minds. Not like Lea.

But Isa is also not typically rankled, unsettled, or made _jealous_ by Lea’s interacting with others. Making friends as Lea does. The sun shines bright as it will, rays touching here and here and here. And the moon is content to be caught in its radiance, as a reflection of its light. Lea smiles when Isa talks like that, as if he somehow doesn’t find it unbearably cheesy. Maybe he hears the truthfulness behind the words, even hidden in similes as they are. Isa is Lea’s best friend, and they both know that nothing will ever change that.

There’s something about Ventus though.

He’s _blinding,_ like Lea, but a different kind of bright. There’s something that happens when he and Lea meet. Like a firework going off, a clash of light and sound. And Lea brightens, blooms like a shower of sparks in the night sky. Flares, like a fire fanned by the wind.

It’s a split second meeting. A spar, a quick walk around town, a momentary stop at their favourite ice cream store. But Lea can’t forget him. That brilliance. A boy, a traveller, shining like a star and gone like the wind. It fuels his adventurous spirit, spurs on more determined attempts on the castle. More intense sparring sessions. Eyes perpetually drawn to the stars.

But that’s fine.

Isa doesn’t know where Ventus came from, but he knows the rules of their world, and he knows that leaving and entering are no easy feats. Lea watches for Ventus’s return, to those twinkling stars and the whispers on the wind, and Isa waits for him to forget, to move on.

They’re growing up. They won’t, can’t, be wayward summer children forever. A school year passes, and another, and the clouds over the castle grow darker still.

Lea plays with his lighter, flicking the cap open and shut. Old burns healed, new ones scabbing over. Eyes shining as always. Personality obnoxious as ever. Still firebrand bright, like the comets they watch from the roofs, flat on their backs with all of eternity above them.

An adventure up there, among the meteors and the stars, doesn’t sound so bad. It’s not an all-consuming desire for Isa, but it would be _cool._ He would enjoy it, journeying with Lea. Discovering the secret, hidden corners of the universe.

And if they happened to run into Ventus again, well then, maybe Isa will be able to understand that brilliance, the light. To figure out what about him set Lea off so vividly and vibrantly.

And, maybe, try sparring against Ven himself. Bring himself in from the sidelines. Let all three of them collapse in a laughing heap on the ground. Loosen those shields of his, just a little.

In the meantime, however, they’ll keep fake-raiding the castle. A welcome pastime. A fun placeholder for the adventures they’ll have when they reach the stars. The magic, the thrill.

The mysteriously absent guards should have tipped them off.

In their visions of future adventures, they never thought about the darkness. About the infinite blackness of a universe with all of its stars blown out. But that yawning cavern, that black hole of empty space, opens up inside their chests. Matching wounds, matching scars, matching _nothingness._

Lea still smells like smoke, but it’s acrid, like burning rubber. The curls of smoke are dark, flames licking at his shiny black boots and dancing over the tattoos, newly carved on his cheeks.

But it’s not Lea anymore, is it?

The world has shifted under their feet. A whole new reality has been revealed to them. The universes have opened up, a league of adventures awaits them, and they’re numb to it.

Familiarty is ‘comforting’, in an abstract, barely there way. The echo, the shadow of emotion. He explains it to them, the man named Xemnas, and it makes sense in a dull sort of way.

It’s like the echo of a friendship. Axel looks at Saix and remembers warm afternoons wrapped up in one another. Hands here and there, mechanical whirring of the ceiling fan, noise from the street below. The sound of Isa’s breathing, feeling his chest rise and fall under Lea’s arm, flung out to lie across him. His hair spread across his pillow, the smell of his stupid, cheap cologne and the mint gum he likes to chew. The warm feelings. The _yes, I could lie here like this forever, probably, even if he kicks me in the kidneys when he’s dreaming._ That feeling.

Isa’s fingers are soft, he likes to lotion them constantly, and Lea likes to play with them. Noticing the differences between his calloused, smoke-stained, flame-bitten hands, and Isa’s surprisingly smooth and gentle ones.

 _Love?_ Axel wonders idly, thinking back. Because it’s easier to address an emotion, to confront it, when you are no longer feeling it. No longer capable of feeling it.

He dismisses the thought easily. It doesn't matter anymore, after all.

Happiness – unhappiness. Sadness, anger. They all seem like foreign concepts now. Xemnas tells them their numbers, gives them a purpose, a goal. To return what has been lost. To make themselves _whole._

Because if there is anything he _can_ feel. Anything that pierces through the empty shell, it is the stark feeling of _nothingness._ Of wrongness. It is that feeling that led them to follow Xemnas in the first place. That feeling and his promise to fix it.

It’s easy to throw themselves into it. Into the easy, emotionless personas of their Nobody selves. It’s easy being all the things he needs to be in order to carry out his role in the organization, to carry out his and Saix’s plan to escape the organization. The layers and layers of secrecy, of deception. The vague sensation – nothing more than an echo – that he should feel dirty, that he should feel bad for being as effortlessly underhanded as he is. As he’s become.

Because Axel is a spy and an assassin and the bitter aftertaste of bad tobacco on the back of your tongue. Like the tires they’d burn in the backlots, rubber twisting and melting into an unrecognizable black stain.

Fire comes to his fingers like a faithful dog now. If there’s anything that he can feel, anything that fills that hollow cavern in his chest, it’s fire. Smouldering in his palm, burning along his chakrams until the metal is redhot, vibrating with it. He thinks back to those burning tires and imagines setting his shiny new black coat aflame. Watch the red-orange lick hungrily at the leather, watch holes burn through the black.

The amount to which he’s capable of _wanting_ seems limited, and _yearning_ appears to be beyond him entirely. But if there’s anything that pulls insistently at his gut, it would be the wish for his fire to be able to burn away the limitless dark inside his chest. The same way it ate through those old tires. The same way he imagines it eating through his Organization coat.

And maybe, in a dull sort of a way, there's a desire for those lazy summer days. The heat and the dirt and the laughter. Together with those emotions, those unnameable sensations that he can no longer feel. The memories that he can cling to, but can't connect to. A desire to return to whatever he and Saix had then, when they were young. 

But the past is unreachable, and the future attainable only through more bloody work, more shadow-stained endeavours. And he and Saix are together, like they always have been, and Axel thinks that's important. That's notable. 

Even if they can barely recall what feelings had tied them so closely in the first place. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Muse: You know, 'We Did It When We Were Young' is an excellent Axel/Saix song. 
> 
> Me: Yeah, I guess. But I don't ship it. 
> 
> Muse: ...like a _really_ good AkuSai song. 
> 
> Me: Okay? But I'm a hardcore Akurokushi stan and also I think Saix is a giant bag of dicks?
> 
> Muse: 
> 
> Me: 
> 
> Muse: but you'll do it anyway
> 
> Me: alskd

**Author's Note:**

> Part two will be posted (fingers crossed) on August 7th.


End file.
